Maria Cruz (VU Amsterdam Library) and Yasemin Turkyilmaz-van der Velden (TU Delft) will organise a workshop on software reproducibility at the DTL Communities@Work conference on 2 October 2018 in Utrecht. The workshop will address the use of software containers to improve software reproducibility. In addition, we will discuss how researchers and research software engineers can collaborate to improve software design. Please join us!
Science is currently confronted with a reproducibility crisis. In some fields, more than half of published studies fail reproducibility tests. In a survey of 1576 scientists conducted by Nature in 2016, most respondents agreed that there was a crisis and over 70% said they had tried and failed to reproduce another group’s experiments. Given the ubiquitousness of software in many areas of contemporary scientific research, it could be argued that reproducible science calls for reproducible software.
In a Comment in Water Resources Research, Hut, van de Giesen & Drost (2017) argue that documenting and archiving code and data is not enough to guarantee the reproducibility of computational results. They suggest using software containers and they encourage researchers to work more closely with research software engineers to learn best practices in software design. The authors present their advice in the context of hydrology, but it should apply more generally.
This workshop will explore how this advice could be put into practice, and what role various stakeholders (researchers, research software engineers, research institutions, data stewards, and research support staff) could play. We will start with a short presentation to introduce the topic and set the scene. You will then have the chance to discuss the topic in small groups and to contribute with your ideas and expertise. The recommendations and insights arising from the workshop will build on the work of the participants of a previous workshop and will be published and disseminated as widely as possible via a blogpost.
For whom?
- Research software engineers/developers
- Researchers
- Data stewards and others involved in research support
DTL Communities@work
On 2 October 2018, DTL will organise its Communities@Work conference in Utrecht. The conference welcomes all professionals working in the fields of life science and data science to participate and jointly develop life science data solutions. The meeting will feature lectures, interactive workshops, poster presentations, stakeholder and sponsor booths, and it will offer ample network opportunities. All activities are organised in close collaboration with DTL partner communities. Read more and register.